One True Friend

by Joyce Hansen

Overview

Amir has finally landed in a good place. His new foster parents, the Smiths, are loving and kind, and he has been reunited with his youngest brother, whom the Smiths have raised since babyhood. Amir knows he should be happy, but he is uncomfortable around the Smiths, and his little brother doesn’t even remember him. If only Amir could find the rest of the siblings he was separated from when his parents died, perhaps he would feel more at ease.

Luckily, he has someone he can open his heart to—his friend Doris, who lives in his old Bronx neighborhood. The two of them share all their feelings and concerns in frequent letters. But when Doris writes Amir that a friend has been experimenting with drugs, unpleasant memories rise to the surface of his mind.

In this long-awaited companion to The Gift-Giver and Yellow Bird and Me, Amir not only must find a way to come to terms with his family’s past, but he must also determine where his true home is.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780618609918
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/17/2005
Series:	163rd Street Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 7.62(h) x (d)
Lexile:	720L (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 12 Years

About the Author

Joyce Hansen, a former New York City schoolteacher, is a well-known author of both fiction and nonfiction and a four-time Coretta Scott King Honor recipient. Born and raised in the Bronx, Ms. Hansen now lives in West Columbia, South Carolina.

Table of Contents

Part 1	Amir's Story	1
Part 2	Brothers	45
Part 3	Memories	73
Part 4	Friends and Family	109
Part 5	Lost and Found	135

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

[A] good-hearted and honest treatment of kids' feelings as they cope with their own separate challenges.
Kirkus Reviews

[T]he focus and strength of the book is in its quiet and gentle story that explores the nature of friendship and family. The story is well crafted, and the characters are skillfully and sympathetically drawn.
VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates)

This is a warm and gently treatment of a kid's struggle to find a family.
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Hansen has written a touching story of a young boy's struggle with a painful past and a scary future. . . . Both sad and hopeful, this story dramatizes the struggle for survival, the primal pull of family, and the gift of "one true friend." Booklist, ALA

Editorial Reviews

[A] good-hearted and honest treatment of kids' feelings as they cope with their own separate challenges.
Kirkus Reviews

[T]he focus and strength of the book is in its quiet and gentle story that explores the nature of friendship and family. The story is well crafted, and the characters are skillfully and sympathetically drawn.
VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates)

This is a warm and gently treatment of a kid's struggle to find a family.
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Hansen has written a touching story of a young boy's struggle with a painful past and a scary future. . . . Both sad and hopeful, this story dramatizes the struggle for survival, the primal pull of family, and the gift of "one true friend." Booklist, ALA —

From the Publisher

A semi-epistolary novel in which two friends help each other through hard times with a long-distance correspondence. Hansen brings back characters introduced in The Gift-Giver (1980) and Yellow Bird and Me (1986) to continue their stories. Amir, 14, an orphan whose family has been broken up, is adjusting to life in Syracuse with new foster parents, the Smiths, who have raised his little brother from the age of two. Meanwhile, Doris, 12, sends him news of his old Bronx neighborhood and writes of her friendship with a girl who she learns has a marijuana habit. The letters back and forth between the two children are buttressed by a more traditional third-person narrative of Amir's activities in Syracuse, for the story is primarily his. It's his quest to find his aunt and his other brothers and sisters to reunite his family, and his struggle to overcome the shame that clouds his memory of his parents' last days. He is a genuinely sympathetic character, his loneliness and reluctance to trust this new set of foster parents being compounded by his little brother's total attachment to the Smiths and his heartbreaking lack of memory of his birth family. In their correspondence, however, the kids come across as almost impossibly sweet; their letters have a few token grammatical errors but otherwise Amir and Doris express themselves with astonishing fluency and with a sort of forced naivete that frequently falls flat. Nonetheless, it's a good-hearted and honest treatment of kids' feelings as they cope with their own separate challenges. The story can stand on its own; newcomers to the series, though, may want to go back to the earlier books to see how Amir and Doris's friendship started. (Fiction.8-12)

Kirkus Reviews